This has been a very busy but rather dull week, which exactly explains why very often there is no blog for weeks at a time - our lives are far too tedious to write about. This week was an absolutely typical example of what our life can be like. It went like this:
Saturday - the start of 2 week's holiday washing. Always takes ages - reasons below.
Sunday - to South London to eat grandson's birthday family lunch with various relatives
Monday - more holiday washing, then Doctor's appointment
Tuesday - ironing fest
Wednesday - Hospital appointment, then to South London to grandson's birthday tea
Thursday - to South London again to do my sister's shopping and gardening
Washing here always takes a long time because, like many apartments, we aren't allowed to hang washing out, and there isn't room in the house for a separate dryer. So either you festoon your house with wet washing, or you accept that each machine load takes several hours.
Every trip to South London takes around an hour each way, depending on traffic. So trips to visit my son and grandson or to help my sister, who is awaiting a hip replacement operation, take most of the day.
Friday was a different day, fortunately. I wanted to go out early and visit another garden, as it was the most beautiful sunny day, but I had to wait in for a delivery which tried to come yesterday when we were out. The garden I wanted to visit is in Sussex near here. I had long wanted to see it, and hoped to visit it while the sun was shining, but though it's been such lovely weather all week, each day has just been too busy. And Friday was allegedly the last day of good weather this week, but we couldn't go out until the parcel arrived!
Eventually, we had time for a short visit of almost two hours in the afternoon, after the parcel was finally delivered.
The garden is called High Beeches, it's in West Sussex, on the Weald and hence steep in places. It is 27 acres (about 11 hectares) of woodland and water garden, and is certainly spectacular. I had expected to see more of the autumn colours, but perhaps the recent warm weather had deceived some of the trees into hanging onto their leaves for a little longer.
The maples had already started to be ready for autumn though. Their glowing colours contrast with the greens of the other trees, and the deeper greens of the conifers.
The garden pamphlet says there are many unusual plant specimens here, and apparently many of them were provided by Frank Kingdon-Ward, the plant hunter I mentioned when I wrote about our visit to Borde Hill Gardens - the intrepid chap who was somewhat inconvenienced by the murder of his mail runner.
As High Beeches, though a very different garden, is not that far away from Borde Hill, I suppose it is not surprising that the same plant hunter supplied them both.
Although many of the trees were not yet in full autumn colours, I am told it has been an amazing year for berries and seeds. The wonderful weather at the moment is providing perfect conditions for a spectacular display of autumn colour in berries, and we were directed to these.
This is a plant called Symplocus paniculata (I had to photograph the label, there's no hope I would remember that) which is a small deciduous shrub that has little white flowers in May and June and brilliant blue berries in autumn. It was introduced in Britain in 1871 and is a native of China, Japan and Taiwan.
I was surprised to see Hydrangeas in flower so late in the year, since our ones in the lane have been finished for weeks, but this is a slightly different variety.
It's something called Hydrangea paniculata 'Unique' and seems to begin a rather pale colour, from what I can gather, then it turns pink.
There are vibrant beds of cyclamen glowing under some of the taller trees.
This reminded me that the cyclamen my sister gave me for my birthday was going to be very unhappy on the bright windowsill where I had put it. Sure enough, when I got home I looked at it and it was miserably droopy. It looks much happier now I've found it a dark corner - just like these ones under the shade of a huge tree.
There are more open areas in the garden, with vistas across the hillside and some of the ponds.
As you can see, as well as the maples, there are some autumn colours, but many of the trees are still green.
The photo below is fairly typical of the garden, one of the ponds with open areas and glades in the woodland.
All over this part of the world you can see the huge leaves of gunnera, like those on the right of this photo. I think this must have been a very popular plant in the early 1900s, I can't think of many gardens where I haven't seen it.
At the one of the lowest parts of the garden is the largest pond.
There's a beautiful view up towards the entrance of the garden, higher up the hill, and it was such a still day you can see all the reflections in the water.
Because High Beeches is a woodland garden, many of the paths are unmade, just mowed into the grass. This means they are bumpy and lumpy, steep in places and probably very slippery at times. By the time I'd got this far, my knee was aching and I was wishing I'd brought my walking poles. The doctor I saw earlier in the week suggested I might have done some serious damage, as the knee was still swollen and painful. I suppose it hadn't been all that sensible to be scrambling about on bumpy paths, rather than resting it. However, the garden is very well supplied with seats, so I was able to rest the knee several times when it got too painful.
As is traditional with us, we were the last people out and found the garden staff waiting for us to leave. The garden closes for winter at the end of this month, so perhaps we will find time to go again when there are more autumn colours - only this time I'll take my walking poles!
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